Assignment 13 PDF

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This assignment is mandatory. Questions are answered in detail. They are required to be in essay format. ...

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Week 13 Assignment 1. Identify and discuss the various forms of white-collar crime. The term “white-collar crime” developed because of Edwin Sutherland. He used this to illustrate criminal activities conducted by the rich and powerful. “White-collar crime involves conspiracies by members of the wealthy classes to use their position in commerce and industry for personal gain without regard to the law” (Siegel, 2013, p. 442). Consequently, these criminals are usually taken to civil courts in order for the offended to regain their losses, rather than to solely punish the offender. White-collar crime contributes to greater harm and loss compared to common law thefts as well as causing distrust in the corporate sector due to the abuse of power and position. The UCR and NCVS do not compute the influence of white collar crime. However, it is known and can be estimated how much economic harm white collars crime causes. White- collar crimes can be classified into types or subgroups ranging from white collar swindlers to corporate crime. White-collar swindlers are similar to common law con artists, but it is on a larger scale. These type of swindlers use their position to create a business that sales fraudulent merchandise to clients. This swindle is an ongoing scheme to unsuspicious customers. White-collar chiseling, another form of white-collar crime, is where a business owner manipulates and cheats customers by overcharging their services or charge for something the client never received. This also involves an employee stealing from the business by deceitful means. White-collar exploitation involves the abuse of power by charging the client for services that they are already permitted to have. If the customer refuses payments, then their services are refused. In contrast to exploitation, white-collar influence peddling involves “influence peddlers take bribes to use their positions to grant favors and sell information to which their co-conspirators are not entitled” (Siegel, 2013, p. 449). White-collar embezzlement and employee fraud consists of people in position using it to their advantage in order to defraud the company of funds. Instead of the company committing the crime, the company is being victimized. The final subgroup of white-collar crime is corporate crime. Corporate crimes include the corporation and its representatives violating laws. The owner of the company does this in order to further the company’s investments. 2. Identify and discuss the efforts to try to control white-collar crime. White collar crimes are viewed differently from common law thefts. This is primarily because common law crimes are seen as dangerous, while white collar crimes are seen as less hazardous due to the fact that these older citizens have a family to take care of. In the past, serious punishments were not given to those who committed white collar crime because public humiliation was deemed necessary enough for the seriousness of their actions. Bias is held against how to punish those in the upper class. The type of people that commit these crimes are successful citizens and the rich and powerful. Often times, the victim of these crimes cannot be determined. This ambiguousness makes it hard in determining “crime fraud from mere lawful exaggeration, tax evasion from tax avoidance, insider trading from savvy investing, obstruction of justice from zealous advocacy, bribery from horse trading, and extortion from hard bargaining” (Siegel, 2013, p. 457). Not knowing how to distinguish between crimes leads to lighter sentences on the upper class, unlike when the lower class commits crimes. In response to control white collar crime, compliance and deterrence strategies have been implemented.

The main goal of the compliance strategy is to conform to the law without needing to penalize the offenders. The lesser measure involves offering incentives to the company in exchange for conformity to the law. This strategy relies of administration efforts like administration agencies to implement regulations. Examples of these agencies are the Food and Drug Administration that regulates drugs and food and The Securities and Exchange Commission that regulates Wall Street. Penalties are attached as a method to prevent violations and encourage compliance. Other methods of compliance are required self policing. All together, these strategies aim to have corporations abide by the law. Past violations in white collar crime have resulted in lenient sentences. However, this crime is unethical similarly to common law crimes and some people believe that they should be punished in the same manner. This is due to the notion that “the largest fines and penalties are no more than a slap on the wrist to multibillion-dollar companies” (Siegel, 2013, p. 458). It is necessary to implement a fear of punishment in order to have an effective deterrence strategy. Deterring white collar crime requires recognizing criminal activity, determining who is responsible for the crime, and punishing the offenders. The effort to control crime is proving to show some effectiveness regardless of major corporate cases being let off on lenient sentences. 3. Explain exploitation and influence peddling. Describe how they are different. When an individual in a company abuses their power and position by forcing or pressuring a client into making payments for services that they are already permitted to have, white collar exploitation occurs. If and when the customer refuses to pay the extra charges, the company refuses to give them their services. Threats against the victim are associated with exploitation. This type of crime occurs at the state and local level, in private industries, and most often in the criminal justice when police or judges threaten arrest or conviction if they do not make payments. Somewhat similar, yet different, to exploitation, influence peddling involves “individuals holding important institutional positions to sell power, influence, and information to outsiders…” (Siegel, 2013, p. 449). The victims of this crime show interest in the company and their activities and are used to the influence peddlers advantage. Peddlers take buy offs and utilize having power and position to provide favors and and sell information to people who are not permitted to have it. This is the contrast to exploitation; threats are given to the victim in order to coerce them to pay extra payments, while influence peddling involves company’s employees undermining the organization for their own interests. 4. Explain green-collar crime. Who is in control of dealing with green-collar crimes? Green collar crime is defined as an enterprise crime that violates the laws that protect the environment. However, this simple definition does not fully define the whole concept of green crime. It consists of illegal dumping schemes, actions that lead to harm in the environment, and outcomes that cause harm to the environment due to how, where, and what is produced. There are several perspectives that explain green crime: the legalist view, the environmental justice view, and the biocentric view. The legalist view sates that “environmental crimes are violations of existing criminal laws designed to protect people, the environment, or both” (Siegel, 2013, p. 459). For instance, this would involve occupational health and safety crimes along with laws that come from enactments like the Clean Care Act. In contrast, the environmental justice perspective believes that the legalist view is too narrow. This is because this expands to other areas in outside nations.

The laws in other countries are different from ours and often enough are inadequate compared to our laws and regulations. The biocentric view is more broad. Its view is that if the biosystem is damaged by and type of human activity then that can be defined as environmental harm. Those who control green collar crime is the Environmental Protection Agency. The laws that they enforce is the Clean Water Act, Emergency Planning and Community Right –to-Know Act, Endangered Species Act, and Oil Pollution Act. The rules and regulations of these acts involve maintaining water quality, requiring the disclosure of toxic chemical released, protecting endangered species, and requires federal response plans for things like oil spills. This agency’s enforcement has been an effective means on prosecuting violations. 5. Identify and explain the causes of the enterprise of crime. Enterprise crimes are business and commerce related crimes. It consists of ongoing illicit activities by an individual or a group of individuals that violate that laws required to run a legitimate business. Therefore, the types of offenders are wealthy business persons, rather than poor teenagers. Enterprise crimes are able to be committed because these criminals in the business sector have power, position, and acquired trust. The cause of enterprise crime comes from greed and need as well as using rationalizations to ensure that their values are not jeopardized. Greed, as a cause of enterprise crime, is the result of viewing the reward as outweighing the risk. They rationally choose to find a quicker way to obtain wealth, regardless of it being illegal, and think that, because of there rationalizations, they will not get caught. Need also plays a role in why people participate in this criminal activity. When there is a need for financial means, sometimes people resort to crimes like enterprise crime. The rationalization view of things is that everyone else does it, it is not the individual’s fault or responsibility, and there was no harm to anyone. The cultural view states that “some enterprises cause crime by placing excessive demands on employees while at the same time maintain a business tolerant of employee deviance” (Siegel, 2013, p.474). This leads to other employees learning from the more experienced and causes enterprise crime. The self control view is that these types of criminals have low self control. This causes an increase in the inclination for acting on impulse. This view describes them as criminals that are like any other criminal....